I tried to read a Sally Rooney novel and couldn’t get 15 pages in. Whatever other people are seeing there, I couldn’t glimpse it.

It’s like Cormac McCarthy meets 1980s soap opera and about as interesting (that is to say, not at all).

The problem capitalism poses isn't just about inequality, it's about everything. Everything that is broken is broken because the plutocrats need it to be broken and they need a lot of things to be broken. Not just housing, infrastructure, etc, but academia, science, culture.

— scientism (@mr_scientism) September 6, 2021

I don’t think people understand how much this occurs, and how pervasively. I was telling my partner about the corporate/plute to academia to think tank to media/press release propaganda pipeline and she was a bit agog because she’d never really heard or thought about it before, but unknown to most that’s how 60-80% of the information out there gets to the public.

Scientism is correct, of course — this brokenness is a feature, not a bug. It’s what explains lockdowns, travel restrictions and all the related destruction that was triggered by the pandemic but continued and is continuing for other reasons.

These days if it makes the plutes richer it’s good, and if it doesn’t, it’s bad.

Covid Ravaged South America. Then Came a Sharp Drop in Infections. South America was the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic early this year. Experts are trying to find out why new infections and deaths are falling so fast.

HELLO HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE VACCINES?

I mean the article does say that, but it treats the reduction in cases due to vaccination like some inexplicable and shocking mystery as liberals are seemingly duty-bound to do these days. That makes it into quite a weird read. It’s like reading, “It’s unclear how the victim — who was wearing a bulletproof vest — survived getting shot by the bullet that hit him right in the bulletproof vest.”

This has all been deeply strange, and you can see it in the article where the author is forced to grapple with the fact that the vaccines work while somehow treating the idea like it’s just the darndest thing.

An Entire Generation of Americans Has No Idea How Easy Air Travel Used to Be.

I remember and it makes me very sad. Now the libs/lockdown lifers/pandemic panickers want to make it so, so much worse, especially for international travel.

The libs will probably eventually succeed in taking away air travel from us (at least the non-rich) I think, and I already hate them for it immensely. That alone makes me want to destroy contemporary liberalism.

This isn’t the future I signed up for.

The will to believe in a hidden prophet called “Q” is no more bizarre than the will to believe in a proliferating variety of “genders.”

Dang, you’re not supposed to say that. Surprised this got published anywhere. Very good article, though, and connects disparate groups that on the surface seem to have no link but really are not all that different.

Gender is absolutely, unequivocally binary right now. Maybe one day it won't be, much as maybe we could have cat-dog hybrids with enough advanced tech. But at the moment there are two recognizable, distinct patterns – male and female. 8/

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) September 5, 2021

This denial of gender springs from the same well as scientists (weirdly) claiming that, “Because there is some overlap, this proves these two things are EXACTLY THE SAME! And here’s the math to prove it!”

Of course that’s just politics intruding into science and emerges from a shoddy and ill-suited attempt to battle racism/eugenics that does far more harm to science than it does to prevent racism. But there you have it. Now scientists are fecklessly repeating the same mistakes with gender and the denial of biology itself.

The lib implicit and explicit messaging about vaccination is weird: the vaccines don’t work and are pointless but GET VACCINATED!!!!

This is not always but often coming from the same damn people.

It’s weird getting massively better-looking in your mid-40s. I was pretty buff in my early 20s but my face hadn’t matured and changed shape as it has now, so it was much different then.

Dang, talk about blooming late. I’ll never be George Clooney, but I should remind you that George Clooney wasn’t always George Clooney:

That haircut! Lord, someone should go to jail for a long while for that crime against humanity.

Going to the grocery store (my most common social experience) is kind of weird now because women just look at me a lot different, and a whole lot more. Some even follow me a little. I know they think they are being subtle but I’m very sensitive to such things due to my background, so they ain’t all that subtle.

Strange life.

If you want to troll people tell them "wearing a seatbelt increases their chances of dying of cancer", it is trivial in the same way that smoking reduces incidence of Alzheimers but if still baffles many people. https://t.co/NowkyyUxy9

— Napoleon (@NapoleonSMill) September 4, 2021

Indeed. People have huge problems thinking like this. Many people simply cannot, no matter how much they try — I’d say probably 90% of people can’t do it because the abstractions are just too deep.

I’ve noticed this too:

This is also the same group, a group that is becoming larger and larger by the day, that wants us all herded into the pods and eating bug slurry “for our own good.” All of this is tied in with the new puritanism and its later expressions in the enforced asceticism of the lockdown lifer/eternal masker types. I know these movements look disconnected but trust me, they are all related. And they are going to get worse. Far worse.

The covid endgame.

Don’t believe the wacky stuff you see on Twitter about endemicity; this is more accurate. The pandemic will be over by spring 2022 for all intents and purposes. Sure, you’ll still have the lockdown lifers caterwauling, but it’ll be them whining about even more of nothing than what they’re wailing about right now.

Viruses aren’t infinitely adaptable. Immune systems learn. Lockdown lifers hide under beds. It’s the way of the world.